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It’s far too long to write-up as a single article (and I suspect it would bore you all to tears if I tried), so instead I’ll try to write up one section a week.

Interestingly, the tone of this course is overwhelmingly about trying to find evidence for God, and trying to philosophise God into existing. That seems like a little bit of a cop-out of the whole faith equals belief without evidence thing to me, but maybe that’s why I’m an atheist.

Because the Leaf Fell

This section sets the tone and lays some of the groundwork for the rest of the course. It is also, as we shall see, highly flawed and internally inconsistent. It starts by painting a picture. It’s a picture that has a leaf in it.

“…A leaf breaks off of the branch, floats down through the air, swoops from side to side, being pushed about by a soft breeze and then lands on the ground…”

You can probably guess where this is going already, but just in case you’re immune to things less subtle than being smacked repeatedly with a hammer, we are then treated to a discourse on how some single event must have caused the leaf to fall. We are even given a list of possible causes: Gravity, the breeze, squirrels – All building up to this statement, which I shall call Wince Number 1 (because that’s what happened when I read it):

“…We do have to agree that there had to have been some cause that lead to the falling of the leaf.”

Well… No, not really. The implication here is that there must have been one, single causal event which was responsible for the falling of the leaf. But that ignores the possibility that there may have been many events and contributing factors (which, undoubtedly, there are, even for an event as simple as a falling leaf). Remember: The course doesn’t talk in terms of a triggering-event, it talks about a cause. That’s not the same thing, but the piece conflates the two ideas with startling repetition.

At this point you’ve probably already realised that we’re in the midst of a set-up for the fallacy that cause = intention, but stay with me. It gets worse, I promise.

Now we get to a seemingly uncontentious, statement:

“PRINCIPLE #1: Any activity in this universe creates an effect(s)”

Well… Yes, kind of. Even the act of waving my arm in a vacuum has some effect, if only in terms of glycogen and oxygen burned by my muscles, extra carbon dioxide filtered from my blood by my lungs. So I’ll accept that premise as reasonable until proven otherwise.

There follows a short discourse that we shall call Wince Number 2:

“But that principle is also true when read in the other direction. We also have to agree that in order for it to even be possible for the leaf to fall – a greater, earlier event (cause) must have already taken place: the growth of the limb that the leaf grew from! If that limb had never grown then that particular leaf would have never existed in the first place and thus could never fall. Keep going. If the trunk never grew there would be no limb. Before that, if there were no tree seed – the sprout would have never grown to create a trunk which would never produce a branch that would never grow any leaf to fall.

Did everybody spot the step that was skipped? If we really read the first scenario (that some triggering event caused the leaf to fall) in reverse, we would say that the falling leaf required a trigger event to make it fall. Wince Number 2 skips straight past that unavoidable conclusion, stops talking in terms of triggering events, and instead starts conflating required preconditions for an event with cause for the event. So far, so torturous! All of this leads to Wince Number 3:

“PRINCIPLE #2: Conversely, every effect in this universe is the result of some unified cause(s).”

Just in case I haven’t already pointed out how hard the author(s) of Going Deeper have failed to demonstrate a logical chain from principle #1 to principle #2, let me put it like this:

If all trains are all vehicles, are all vehicles trains? No, of course not. Just because A always equals B, does not mean that B always equals A. This is a common failure among poor arguers: Using the rules of mathematics as interchangeable with the rules of logic.

Another short discourse follows, but it’s largely irrelevant as it assumes that principle 2 is true and proven, and it’s really just a re-statement of it in slightly more complex terms anyway:

“PRINCIPLE #3: All activity in this universe is related through a chain of causes/effects. Nothing in this universe is “uncaused” but rather is dependent upon a prior cause.”

To reiterate: The authors have failed to demonstrate that this is true. Let’s see what they fail to demonstrate next! The next one is fairly straightforward: That the chain of cause and effect is not infinite, it is finite.

I’m not actually going critique the paragraph in which this is asserted, because it is so patently ridiculous – The ignorance it displays is breathtaking all on its own. Here it is:

“To start weighing the facts use this example: Imagine that I am going to travel from my house to yours. I feel like going for a brisk, comfortable jog. Your house is the perfect distance for me to run before I get too tired. So I’m going to head over to take a break at your place! I’ve been conditioned for long distance running. This will equip me for the journey. The only catch – the distance between your house and mine is infinite. There is an endless amount of room between my place and yours!

Can this be true? Can I make the trip from my house to yours by covering the infinite distance between them?

We may not be able to figure out the true distance of space but we can figure this out with absolute certainty – if I am standing at my front door and I claim that I can make it to your house which is an infinite distance away I am rotten a liar!

Why? To travel an infinity is to never, ever stop. There is no such thing as endpoints in an infinity! If I start running no matter how trained I am I will not make it. That fact has nothing to do with my athletic stamina but rather with mathematical laws. An infinite distance means that for every step I take there would be another, and another, and another, and another in a never-ending cycle for all eternity. From whatever point are you standing and looking out onto infinity you will never find an endpoint because that is what defines an infinity – no ending point!”

Um… Yes? And? I’m confused about where this is going. I’ll let you look up the next paragraph yourself if you want to read it – It’s pretty much a restatement of the last one. It’s equally irrelevant, and involves brownies. I’m not making this up. It all leads to this:

“PRINCIPLE #4: All events in this universe have a finite list of causes. Since nothing in this universe is uncaused all things are related to one another through their dependency on a prior cause. Thus all existence in this universe is contingent upon common, ultimate, singular first event.

Do I need to restate the obvious? Absolutely no part of principle 4 has been demonstrated or proven in any way, shape or form. Further, even if they could demonstrate first-cause, how could they rule out many simultaneous but otherwise unrelated first-causes? They could not.

What follows is almost sixteen hundred words that can be summed up very easily in one sentence: “The whole universe is subject to the same physical laws and constants as human beings”. Of course, the authors don’t actually demonstrate (or even reason) this. They just blithely state is as if it were an established fact. I suspect this is the reason for the sixteen hundred words: They’re stultifyingly dull and repetitive. I suspect they’re only there in the hope that readers will skip to the conclusion and assume that it has been proven. It hasn’t been proven, or even vaguely justified, but the conclusion is:

“CONCLUSION: Something transcendent to our universe put the chain of causes/effects of our universe into motion. A “FIRST CAUSE” exists.

Hands up if you saw that coming straight from Wince Number 1. I think that will do for now, not least because I’ve reached my limit for reading such silliness for the day. Stay tuned for part 2 next week.

One of the hallmarks of polytheistic religion is how close the Gods are to humans. The Gods are usually just extremely powerful, wise humans. There is also always some kind of higher law above them that they cannot escape.

The Greek Gods were slaves to fate. The Norse Gods could not stop the coming of ragnarok (at least after the Norse were exposed to Christian apocalyptic thought). Most striking of all, the Hindu Gods were stuck dealing with karma and the cycle of death and rebirth.

Call this “the highest law,” or if you want to be pretentious, the “meta-divine realm.”

In theory, there is no “highest law” in Christianity. God is the ultimate and not bound by any restrictions. The danger here is practical: people might begin focusing on the highest law. This is what happened with Hinduism. Hinduism spawned many different sects that sought ways to escape the wheel of life and rebirth without the aid of the Gods, including Buddhism.

Let’s say that there is a highest law, which we will call the “law of purity.” God’s purity is absolute, and He cannot tolerate impurity. God’s nature is such that impure beings are forced away from him, the way that like poles of magnets repel each other. Therefor, impure beings cannot enter heaven, and instead are sent to hell. This is one of the ways that I’ve heard it explained.

If this is the case, then God is not omnipotent. The laws governing purity are more powerful than He and He cannot alter them. He can attempt to work within the rules of the purity system by sacrificing his son and thereby making everyone who believes in Him pure. But he cannot simply declare that everyone is pure, or change the rules of purity so that impure beings are no longer repelled.

If this is the case, then perhaps humans would be better off focusing their attention on the law of purity. We could make an end run around God, defeating the system of purity the way that Buddhists attempt to remove themselves from the wheel of death and rebirth.

This was one of Pulliam’s specialties, and his article is filled with the logical flaws that scholars have found in the PST. But I can’t help feeling that the logical problems are only half of the story.

The PST is most popular among the evangelicals, and Evangelical Christianity is at least partially emotional. Less so than the Pentecostals, but much more than the staid main-line protestants that the evangelicals replaced in America. There’s definitely a stream of emotionalism running through evangelical culture, from the revival to the personal relationship with Jesus.

While the PST can be expressed in a bloodless way, by talking about justification and propitiation, it’s usually heard as an emotional appeal. Jesus died for YOUR sins. Jesus was humiliated, tortured and died just for YOU. That hits the guilt buttons pretty hard.

I think most people are familiar with the feeling of not measuring up. We’re all aware that we’re not perfect, and I suspect that most of us harbor that little pocket of guilt over things we’ve said and done. The PST plays on that guilt and offers the release of redemption.

Logic won’t do much here. Maybe the best way to defang the PST on emotional grounds is to ask what was really sacrificed? What does a days worth of suffering matter to an immortal being? And can a being that transcends humanity really suffer like a human?

Most of all, I think we have to point out that Jesus went in with no uncertainty about his eventual fate. Unlike us limited mortals, Jesus could know that there was a heaven, a God, salvation and the whole nine yards. Even if he “emptied himself” and thus did not know the eventual time of the apocalypse, surely he knew that he was part of the trinity and that a place beside God’s throne was awaiting him.

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Atheists and skeptics now have equal access to our children as we have, which is why the number of Christian youth who believe in the fundamentals of Christianity is decreasing and sexual immorality is growing, apologist Josh McDowell said.

[...]

“The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have… whether you like it or not,” said McDowell, who is author of two books on Christian apologetics, More than a Carpenter and New Evidence that Demands Verdict.

The internet: turning children into atheists and skeptics since the early 90s.

“Now here is the problem,” said McDowell, “going all the way back, when Al Gore invented the Internet [he said jokingly], I made the statement off and on for 10-11 years that the abundance of knowledge, the abundance of information, will not lead to certainty; it will lead to pervasive skepticism. And, folks, that’s exactly what has happened. It’s like this. How do you really know, there is so much out there… This abundance [of information] has led to skepticism. And then the Internet has leveled the playing field [giving equal access to skeptics].”

I get what he’s saying. I think all of us realize that using the internet can be like drinking from a firehose. There’s so much information out there that it can be hard to know what’s real. Dealing with that everyday is going to make anyone more skeptical. But is that necessarily a bad thing?

To McDowell it is. Anything that lead to questioning the revealed truth of evangelical protestant Christianity is definitely a bad thing in his book. But he’s savvy enough to realize that you can’t completely shield your kids, at least not without going full fundy. So he advocates three things, the first two are hard to argue with: live up to your own ideals and have a good relationship with your kids.

The third thing is knowledge. Christians need to “arm yourselves to answer your children’s and grandchildren’s questions.” Not bad on the surface, but the cynic in me thinks that translates to “buy my books!”

The Christian argument for a personal god is the perfect example of a non-sequitur argument. They explain that at the moment of the Big Bang there must have been a “First Cause” that created the universe. The only explanation they can provide for this lack of knowledge is god. We may never know what happened at the first moment, but many models have been used to derive theories for it. Some explain it as a singularity and others claim that we are just part of a multi-verse, but it is clear that the Biblical representation is not accurate. Science is working hard to answer these difficult answers; religion claims to know the answer. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein, have conceded the fact that god created the universe. How can atheists be so arrogant to believe that this genius was wrong? The real question is how can Christians be so ignorant to confuse the words of a man that denounced the idea of a personal god.

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

Albert Einstein and many others have stood in awe as they observed the beauty of the universe. Many physicists have mentioned god when speaking about the beginning of the universe, but their definition of god is different than the monotheistic personal god. The underlying principles that govern the universe are consistent throughout the known universe. The rate of expansion is consistent, the cosmic background radiation is consistent, and Einstein’s general theory of relativity provides consistent and precise predictions about the known universe. These principles have been tested and verified numerous times and this is why we have the Big Bang theory. If one were to call these underlying principles god then many would accept this claim, even atheists have been known to concede to this definition of god. How does this concession lead to a personal god? Here comes the non-sequitur! Because the universe was created, Jesus must be the savior of all mankind and all those that don’t believe will go to hell! WTF!!

These are two separate claims and a concession to the first claim doesn’t provide evidence for the second claim. The second claim goes beyond the underlying principles that govern our universe and seeks to prove a personal god. This claim must be supported by evidence that shows undeniably that one god listens to all of mankind’s prayers and has the ability to answer them. Since we know the criteria required to support this claim it is possible to test it. The Bible has many promises that this personal god has endowed upon believers. The Bible’s main promise states that faith in Jesus is the only way to heaven; conveniently, this promise can’t be proven or disproven, but many others can.

The Bible promises god will answer prayers, but what about the millions of unanswered prayers? If god chooses to answer one prayer then he has the ability to answer them all. If a prayer doesn’t get answered then there are only two possible explanations: 1)god chose not to answer it 2) god doesn’t exist so he can’t answer it. If god chose not to answer the prayer then he is no longer perfect because he didn’t fulfill his promise, which means he no longer exists. Either way this personal god is invalidated. Many people pray and see very inconsistent results. Out of 100 prayers they might see 10 fulfilled; these odds would convince most to get up and leave the card table, but Christians find millions of reasons to justify them when it pertains to god. Shouldn’t god deliver 100% odds; either he is very inconsistent or nonexistent. If something can be done without god’s help then why waste the effort of asking for it?

If god is all-powerful then why did he create deadly genetic disorders that evolve?

Why does he allow innocent people to die every day as their families pray for healing?

How can a just god sit back and watch people in pain as he ignores the cries of his people?

This doesn’t sound like the almighty, loving god that Christians preach about, but these are the observations reality provides. All of the evidence refutes the existence of a personal god. It is more beneficial to analyze the evidence than spend a lifetime ignoring it to hold onto one’s failed belief system.

For example, he argues that the punishments for crimes found in the Hebrew Testament aren’t that brutal when you understand what the text is really saying, and he’s prepared to use dicey translations and claims that metaphorical language is being used in order to make that argument.

Then he’s prepared to argue that the other culture in the ancient Near East were worse, as if God should be graded on a curve.

Then, towards the end of the book, he retreats to William Lane Craig’s argument that morality comes from God, so who are we to complain?

The result is less than the sum of its parts. Any one line of this argument, followed to its end, would have been more effective than the mass of arguments.

Craig has been accused of this kind of argumentation as well, but Craig is a debater. In a debate, throwing out more arguments than your opponent can respond to will score points. In a book, I think it looks weak.

But then, the point of apologetics is to insulate the Christian reader from doubts. The argument doesn’t have to work, it just has to sound good.